Edmund G. "Pat" Brown (1902-1996)

Born in San Francisco, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown obtained a law degree from the San Francisco Law School in 1927 and immediately entered private practice. Politics had always interested Brown, however, and he ran for the California State Assembly in 1928 but lost. Undeterred, Brown remained politically active and eventually chaired the speakers' bureau for Franklin D. Roosevelt's reelection campaigns in 1940 and 1944. In 1943, Brown was elected district attorney of San Francisco and then, in 1950, won statewide election to become California's attorney general. As the only Democrat in statewide office at the time, he won California's Democratic Party's nomination for the governorship in 1958. Winning in a landslide, Brown remained California's governor for the next eight years during which time he worked to resolve California's water crisis and pushed for the reform of labor unions. Brown died at his home in Beverly Hills in 1996.